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Comment by blkhp19 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the React Native fad has come and gone. Even FB is using their own server-driven UI solution nowadays, which allows clients to be dumber while still rendering native components.

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When I worked on the main iOS app at Facebook they used multiple solutions in parallel in the app (ComponentKit, AsyncDisplayKit, RN).

So the fact that some projects are using some new server driven technology for some features doesn’t really prove anything.

Unless they specifically announce they are dropping RN support from the app or you see a big drop off in pull request activity I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions.

It’s gone and for the better. The tipping point was the Airbnb blogpost.

If you actually read the full blog you'll realize it'll actually convince the right people to either adopt or avoid RN:

>The path of a world that is 100% native or 100% React Native is relatively straightforward.

but ultimately... hybrid apps are hard. Airbnb had a ton of infrastructure that needed porting over to RN that often required contributing upstream to fix issues they found. If you're starting from scratch you can get pretty far sticking to React/JS.

imo I can't imagine a startup using anything other than RN (or react-native-web) because of how quickly you can build things.

I built my startup using Ionic/Cordova (since certain APIs weren't available on RN). Now that iOS 12.2 beta is out, it is breaking certain APIs and leaving me no choice but to abandon the hybrid model. If anyone else out there is planning on doing anything other than a simple photo sharing/PWA app, don't bother with hybrid - you'll have to go Native at some point.

Can you expand on the APIs that broke for you?

That's is just not true.

What would you say comes after RN?

The realization that avoiding native brings more problems than it solves and that for CRUD apps mobile Web is good enough.

Even boring CRUD apps might want e.g. push notifications.

PWAs or WebSockets

Flutter?

That sounds interesting, source?

Engineering manager of React denied this claim, previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17216628

Note that the claim that was denied was Facebook moving away from React Native.

Server-driven UI rendering and Litho/ComponentKit are also growing along with React Native. Facebook app has a big enough surface that it makes sense to have different rendering strategies for different use cases.

Server-driven UI rendering and React-Native isn't mutual exclusive though. Server can still render a React-Component-tree-like structure that will then be used in the client to render the actual component in react native. This gives you ability to make some UI layout/theme adjustment from the server, which is good for A/B test. Doesn't means it goes back to rendering every view from the server on every interaction.

"Facebook app has a big enough surface that it makes sense to have different rendering strategies for different use cases."

That's an odd statement. Playing mix-n-match with rendering strategies without a very clear UX justification for doing it is an invitation for designers and mediocre product people to indulge themselves at the expense of the overall UX.

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